Palm Sunday

I have often thought that one way to tell that you had a really good weekend is by how sore you are when you’re done.  By that measure, this weekend just now winding to a close was a rousing success, cuz, man my calf muscles are killing me.    And, yes, this is dancing related, though not the usual dancing.

You see, Saturday night there was a square dance in Cincinnati, a special square dance put on for Catholic young adults, self-proclaimed as the social event of the season.  Some of us in Catholic Life (my Catholic young adult group) are friends with some of the people putting it on, so we decided to get in on the action.  Well, I should say that the girls decided to get in on the action.  Most of the boys (except for a select few, who consequently got major cool points) decided to stay home.  But the girls put on their dancing shoes and headed down.

And, you know, I guess we made something of a splash.  It helps that we’re pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself, and most of us really like dancing.  There were three sets of square dances separated by good old fashioned shake-your-booty DJ’d dancing (think really good wedding DJ), and pretty much any time the music was playing, you’d find us out on the dance floor, having a really good time.  It was a lot of fun.  I hadn’t been noticing other people noticing us (I was mostly having much too good of a time dancing), but at the end of the night when it was time to say good-bye, it was kinda awesome finding my girls in the center of a group of guys all trying to persuade them to come back down to Cincinnati sometime.  We, of course, tried to persuade them to come up to Dayton.  We’ll see if any of them make the trip.  We know that at least one succeeded in getting a particular girl’s number (Pippi and I gave each other a high five when we saw him go for his phone – we’re fans of our friends getting some action), so I have a feeling that we’ll be seeing some new faces in our neck of the woods sometime soon.

For myself, I especially enjoyed seeing That Guy again.  I was trying to remember the last time I’d actually seen him, and I think it was about three years ago.  We had hung out some back then, but then life happened.  We didn’t see each other so much anymore, he started grad school and moved to Cincinnati, and we sortof lost touch.  He has always been one of my favorite people, so it was really, really good to reconnect with him.  All in all, it was a really good night.

The rest of the weekend has been pretty low key.  I’ve been doing some spring cleaning, which is new for me.  Usually the only thing that really gets me to clean the house is knowing that I have company coming over!  But it feels good.  One of my New Year’s ambitions was to get the house in better order, and it looks like I’m making some pretty significant progress towards that.

The really exciting thing, though, is that on Monday I’m finally, finally moving into my new offices.  At long last I will be in a place that is really mine, not a place where I’m there on sufferance, as a favor for the time being.  Moreover, I will have my storage areas right next to me, instead of on two other completely different floors.  No longer will I have to make a field trip every time I have to help someone pick up their uniform order.  No longer will pulling someone’s file take up to twenty minutes.  I will have room to file things, room to store things, room to spread out and get things organized.  Oh, my friends, I can’t wait!

And while I’m deliriously happy about this move, I have to also admit that there is some sadness too.  My old office has been good to me, particularly since it’s right next to my friends.  There’s the ED unit admin who’s become a good friend and a few others, but mostly it’s my police buddies.  It makes things easy having them so close, and I will miss seeing them a lot.  They’re not really happy about me moving either.  They like having me close, not just because it makes it easy to hang out, but because we have to work together a lot on setting up badges.  It was very cute watching them try not to grin every time I told them there had been another delay in me moving.  On Friday Sarge told me that he had actually been pretty upset that I was really moving, that he likes having me nearby, particularly since I always have a smile on my face.  He has a bit of a temper, does Sarge, and he told me that there were times that he was feeling like punching someone’s face in, and then I would walk by and smile, and he’d relax.  It was the most awfully sweet thing.  I keep telling them that they have to come visit me, but it won’t be the same, and we all know it.

Of all the people in the hospital, the police officers are the ones who have been the most consistently kind and welcoming to me, the ones who have always had my back.  With my own actual team so far away, they are the ones I’ve relied on.  Now that my real team has offices at the hospital, they’ll be spending more time there.  I know that it’s time for me to start bonding with them instead of the cute guys down the hall.  But still I don’t want to say good-bye.

The Holy Name of Jesus

On New Year’s Day, I was thinking how different this year has been from pretty much every other New Year’s Day going back just about as far as I can remember.  Usually, New Year’s Day means the Huge Family Party, in which we pull out all the stops to entertain about forty of our nearest and dearest.  This means that we would have pulled ourselves out of bed early after days of cooking and cleaning (plus one night of revelry), ready to face a tight schedule of more cooking, cleaning, arranging, and then entertaining.  It would be a great party, a great way to start the new year, and definitely worth it.  However, it would also be a lot of stress and everyone would fall into bed at the end of the night totally exhausted.

This New Year’s, I got up in plenty of time to make it to Mass at my home parish, ate breakfast at home, and then headed over to the Family Homestead in time to see Indy and Rosie off to the Bengal’s game.  After a little while of hanging out, the rest of us headed off together to watch Tin Tin, which was awesome.  When we came out, we decided to see how many of us we could squeeze into the instant photo booth.  The answer was five (see evidence above).  The Duchess, Sae, and I were on the bottom, and AnniPotts and Fleur were on top.  I’m particularly proud of the picture on the bottom, where I managed to get at least half of my face into the frame.

After the movie, we headed home and cooked a quick dinner of pork chops, sweet potato fries, green beans and salad, and ate together around the big table.  Then there was dishes, and then I headed home again.  It was a little surreal to be heading away from my parents’ house on New Years Day, so early and so rested, but it was nice.

The night before was very nice too.  Mariah had her annual New Year’s Eve Party, complete with breaking a pinata in the front yard.  The pinata this year was the most adorable dinosaur, with big brown eyes, and a long neck that made him look disconcertingly like a llama.  And how can you hit a llama?  It’s just not possible.  It was a good thing it was dark, and we were blindfolded, otherwise we might have been totally defeated by The Cute.  Still, somehow we were able to overcome.  :D

After the pinata was properly subdued, we all headed back inside for more fun until we crowded up stairs (that’s where the tv is) to watch the ball drop in Times Square and toast the New Year.  Then, of course, there were noisemakers and poppers on the front porch.  But there was more.  I had gone into the house, and was tidying up the upstairs room when PM came to get me.  While he was gone in the wilds of Indiana the past year, he was apparently so lonely that he resorted to ballroom lessons.  I had told him that I wanted to learn Hustle (which is his favorite), and he had decided that I was going to have a lesson right then.  I’m always up for dancing, so I followed him downstairs to Mariah’s dining room, where I got my first Hustle lesson.  And then, since turn-about is fair play, I taught him some East Coast swing.  And then all the girls who had been watching wanted to learn swing too.  So I ended up starting off my New Year by beginning to learn a new dance, and then giving swing dancing lessons in my sister’s dining room.  Not a bad start, that.

Now I am in the midst of my last week at Job1 and Job2.  Tomorrow is my last day at Job2, and I’ve gathered that there is going to be some sort of good-bye luncheon.  No one has actually told me this, but they keep accidentally copying me on the e-mails.  Then I’ll take down the things on my bulletin board, return the cup I borrowed from one of them when mine disappeared, make a few last contract files, and say good-bye.

I really hate good-byes.

Sigh.

St. Edmund Campion

One of the delightful things about The Duchess & 007′s wedding was their first dance.  They’re both so silly, and they decided to share that silliness in a wonderful way.  Uncle C called them both “a couple of ham bones,” and they really are!  The result was awesome, and thanks to Crafty Minx being in the right position to capture it, I can share it with you:

If that doesn’t make you smile, I don’t know what would!

ETA: Indy has the first of the pictures from the wedding up on her blog.  Go see them – they’re lovely!

St. Charles Borromeo

I first fell in love with dancing while I was watching Gene Kelly.  But my firm conviction that dancing with a partner must be the most wonderful, most exciting, most romantic thing possible was solidified by watching Dirty Dancing.  Patrick Swayze had a lot to do with that.  Sexier than Scott Hastings, with a magnetic charm all his own, he made defying your family and friends to run off with an itinerant ballroom dance teacher look like a viable life choice.  I mean, heck, wouldn’t you?  Is there anything the man can’t make look good?  I mean, look what the guy does for a mug of Pabst:

I rest my case.  Patrick Swayze is apparently God.

St. Germaine Cousin

Further evidence that ridiculous and awesome go together:

Yes, you really saw that.  And man, does Darth Vader have some sick moves!

Also, the dancer’s name is Jonathan Arons, and he’s pretty cool.